Bound By Love
by CardioQueen
Summary: Bound By Love by Gran Bel Fisher. Songfic. Post 03.09, Spoilers. Obviously Bang. I do nothing else.


_**Tiptoeing along the line,**_

_**Just in case you're not fine.**_

_She frantically searched the empty corridors for him. _

_There were whispers. Whispers that the Preston Burke was in the morgue operating on a cadaver._

_'Stupid nurses.' she muttered under her breath._

_She threw open the door to a darkened autopsy suite, and there he was, one bright light in the middle of a darkened room, his surgical instruments seemingly duller than they are in the OR._

_"Burke..." she sighed breathlessly. "What are you doing?" _

_He looked up at her, determination shining in his eyes...and something else..fear?_

_"What does it look I'm doing?"_

_  
"You're not in med school. You don't need to practice procedures on a corpse." she looked down at the cadaver and frowned. _

_"Better than on a patient." he muttered, not even casting her a second glance._

_"Burke, you're hand is fine!!" she fought._

_Had he not been handing surgical tools, she would've grabbed his hand to reassure him._

_"Right." _

_"Are you...mad at me? You're mad at me!" her thoughts began to spin out of control for fear...for worry that he was upset with her._

_"Forget it, don't worry about it. You have patients." He was pushing her away._

_"I'm on call in the pit. I don't have any patients."_

_"Cristina!" he chided, nearly throwing down his tools. He was losing control, his life, his career, it was all spinning out of control._

_"I'm...I'm...I'm not leaving." What had this man done to her? She couldn't even speak without stumbling over her words. _

_He nodded towards a stopwatch on the table, "Time me." was all he said.  
_

_**I give in to your needs, **_

_**It might just be what you need.**_

_He continued to work nervously under the bright light, pulling at sutures and the pain began to radiate down his arms. Like tendrils of doubt and anxiety, they wormed their way around his wrist, and his hand began to shake with trepidation._

_Her heart stopped, "What? What?" then she realized what it was. It was the same thing that she'd pushed out her of mind, "Oh, Burke. I thought you told me..." she trailed off._

_"I can't hold this still long enough to grab." he interrupted her._

_"You told me your hand was fine." she continued._

_"Look, I can't..." but this time she cut him off. _

_"You told me your hand was fine!" she interjected again._

_"It's not fine!" he snapped, "You wanted to believe I was fine. You wanted me to be fine! You want it, I want it! Damn it!" he restrained himself from saying her name. Damn it Cristina would have other implications. And he didn't want to go there. He raised his hands above the patient, "My hands...are the only things that I have that are of any value to me. To you."_

_She felt as if she had been stabbed in the chest, "Not to me."_

_"Yes, to you! You want Preston Burke!" he snapped, "My hands...these..." he raised his hands in her face, "are who I am. If I can't do this, If I can't finish this surgery..." he trailed off._

_She sensed the words that were coming next, and panicked. He would not do this to her. Her mind began to race to figure out what she could do to prevent the unsaid words from being said. "What if I hold the vessel?"  
_

_'Let this work, let this work..' was the only thing running through her mind._

_  
"What if I hold the vessel? Come on...Burke. If I hold the vessel..." she trailed off, hoping he'd pick up._

_It had to be his idea too._

_"Then I can attach the graft." he sighed._

_.  
He continued at work, repairing the heart of a dead man. _

_Repairing the heart of a dead man. That's what it felt like Cristina was trying to do to him. There wasn't much left to salvage, so much had happened before the shooting, and after between them. So much._

_But he continued._

_And she did to._

_"Nobody has to know." she assured him. _

_He wanted to be Preston Burke. He wanted to be the surgeon. _

_That's all that mattered to him. _

_**Even though it's unknown, where the two of us will go,**_

**_and what darkness we'll have to see through.  
_**

'That's where it all went sour.' she thought to herself.

It's where his feelings were numbed, where her feelings were numbed.

It's the event that lit the fuse that triggered the explosion that rocked their relationship.

She continued to stare at the door, unmoving. She'd been there for 30 minutes now, silently weeping, pondering the recent events that had lead to this.

She wasn't going anywhere.

_**Cause I'm bound by love**_

_**And I'm thinking of what could be.**_

This, all of this, was in the past. It was over. But they weren't.

She did things that she regretted, but he had done things too, but they had to move forward.

They had to move forward.

She couldn't imagine herself anywhere else but in his life. In his apartment. In his bed. In his arms.

In his heart.

No, she wasn't going anywhere.

_**Where there's a will, there's a way,**_

_**so will you come out and play, with me,**_

_**with me.**_

"Burke..." she choked out at the door, "Burke...you have to talk to me. I'll stand here all night. I'll stand here all night, and I'll keep you up all night." she threatened, her tears growing heavier. "You won't be able to sleep anyway. Not without me. You've never been able to sleep without me..." she cried.

_**For every tear that's caused by me**_

_**I'll give you space, but you'll know where I'll be. **_

He stood on the other side of the door, listening to her cry.

His heart ached more and more with every stifled sob that he heard.

But he couldn't see her cry. He couldn't watch her cry and hold his resolve. He couldn't be angry if he saw her crying.

And he wasn't ready to make up.

He wasn't ready to forgive her.

And he wasn't ready to admit fault.

_**Waiting there to dry your eyes**_

_**It's so easy to find our way back once we try.**_

"Burke..." she cried through the door quietly. "I'm not going anywhere."

Finally, he couldn't withstand her pain anymore, and he opened the door.

He reached out to her face, rubbing a tear from her cheek, only to be quickly replaced by another one. "Don't go anywhere.", he mumbled.

"I'm not." she sniffed, falling against his chest.

He raised his arms for just a moment, almost unsure of what to do, where to go next, but then his arms settled around her, pulling her closer, hugging her tighter.

Whatever may have happened, it wouldn't be worth losing her. "Tell me why. Tell me what happened." It was the only thing he could think to say.

She looked up to him and nodded, "I was just trying to protect you...to protect this."

He needed answers, and she was going to give them to him. She had to give him the answers if they were going to stay together.

_**Even though it's unknown, where the two of us will go,**_

**_and what darkness we'll have to see through._**

_She stepped into the chief's office, "There's something I have to tell you." she uttered breathlessly, her body covered in blood. _

_"Dr. Yang..." he was taken aback by the silence. _

_She looked down at herself and everything seemed so surreal. She was covered in the blood of their lies, their deceit. _

_"Dr. Yang, is there something wrong?" he asked, urgently, rising from his desk._

_"I need to talk to you." she repeated, still not looking up from the bloody mess that she was drenched in. _

_He slid behind her and carefully undid the ties from behind her neck and slid the gown off of her, "Patricia..." he called out, "Patricia, take care of this for us!" _

_Cristina fell back into a chair in front of his desk, drawing her knees up to her body. "You can't punish him. You can punish me, but you can't punish him."_

_There was a sense of knowing within Dr. Webber, "What has Preston done?" _

_"It wasn't him. It was me." she protested._

_"What happened?"_

_"He has tremors, Chief. Tremors...I've been helping him, when he needs help." she whispered into her knees. "It was my idea. I did it."_

_"You're an intern, Dr. Yang. You are not responsible for this." he groaned, throwing his hand up to massage the bridge of his nose as he often did when he had something difficult to withstand._

_"I did it all. I don't care what I am, or what position I hold. It was me. You can't punish him." she looked up, her eyes red._

_Stress and weariness weathered her face. Sadness was apparent in her eyes. _

_"Dr. Yang, sit over there until I figure out how to remedy this...situation." He picked up his phone, "Patricia, get me Dr. Burke." He looked back up to her, and she was in the corner, her head back in her knees. _

_**Cause I'm bound by love**_

_**And I'm thinking of what could be.**_

"When I was sitting in that corner, the only thing that I could think was that I was protecting you...protecting us. I never thought that you would think that I would actually betray you." she sniffed, lying against him in their bed.

"And then I saw you...I saw you walking towards his office, and I knew it was a mistake."

_She saw him strolling down the skywalk, purpose on his face, strength in his stride. She knew immediately that he was coming to tell the chief himself._

_She cursed herself and silently prayed to be invisible. _

_  
He pushed the door open, "Richard, we need to talk."_

_"Yes we do." was all that he said and he found her in the corner._

_Guilt painted on her face._

_"I was protecting you..." she started quietly, "Tell him, Burke. Tell him it was my idea."_

_"Get out, Yang." the Chief muttered at her, throwing a finger at the door._

_"But Chief, Dr. Webber, it was my fault. This was all me." she was breaking._

_And for some reason, she didn't care._

_"Cristina." Burke hissed, grabbing her shoulders. "Get out." he walked her to the door, and closed it behind her. _

_She stood at the door, her heart aching._

_She had a feeling that this wouldn't be the first time that he'd push her away after this._

_"I'm not going anywhere." she mumbled, taking a seat a few feet away from the Chief's door on the floor.._

_**Where there's a will, there's a way,**_

_**so will you come out and play, with me,**_

_**with me.**_

_She waited patiently for Burke to come out of the office. _

_People, friends, enemies...they passed, made comments, gave looks of uncertainty, of empathy, of disgust._

_But they didn't matter._

_He mattered._

_The door slid open and she was on her feet, "Burke...Burke, talk to me."_

_He did not stop._

_"Don't worry about it Cristina. I've shouldered it. Again." he muttered as he kept going._

_She grabbed his hand, "Burke!" she snapped, pulling at him. _

_But her tiny frame was not enough, "Let me go. Let it go." _

She opened her eyes and found him staring down into hers.

She was no longer staring at a door.

She was looking at her future.

_**The motion of emotion**_

**_Is the thought I feel..._**

And now she was in his arms again, sobbing. And she did not care. She did not care that she was crying, or that her heart was aching.

She was in his arms.

He pressed his lips to her forehead, his own eyes stinging with tears. This wasn't the Cristina he was used to. He was used to the calm collected Cristina.

Not the Cristina who needed him.

She would always need him.

"We'll fix this." he mumbled, running his fingers through her soft black curls.

"Don't ever give up on me..." she whispered into his chest through her tears.

_**And the whispers of a future now keep drawin' me near,**_

**_keep drawin' me near._ **

It was nearing dawn as they laid in bed, his arm in it's rightful place around her waist, her hair tickling his face.

She slept soundly, lightly snoring.

But he could not sleep. There were things they needed to fix, things they needed to do. There were things that they had to work through.

Somehow, the only thing he could focus on in that moment though was how to make it better long enough to give her a ring.

To promise her that no matter what happened that he would never leave her. That he would never give up on her. To promise that he wasn't going anywhere.

_**Cause I'm bound by love**_

_**And I'm thinking of what could be.**_

_**Where there's a will, there's a way,**_

_**so will you come out and play, with me,**_

_**with me.**_

Weeks had passed, both of them were placed on probation, but it didn't matter to them. The probabtion didn't matter because they still had each other, and they had worked through the darkness.

They had their spats, they had their arguments.

They had the nights where she slept on the couch, and then there were the nights that she kicked him out of his own bed and onto his couch.

They had been through hell and back over and over again.

And then they discovered each other all over again.

They learned about each other's pasts, their present together, and the future they both hoped for.

They learned about things they never knew.

They made plans for their future.

And now it was time to return to work.

Cristina frantically threw on her powder blue scrubs, a pink undershirt hugging her body underneath. "I hope you know that I wouldn't have to rush around like this if I didn't have to eat breakfast."

He sat at the table, already dressed and ready to go, with their breakfasts respectively set up. He watched her rush around the apartment and let out a long exhale. He was anxious. He was nervous.

He wanted more time with her.

She fell into the chair next to him, "Why did I agree to the breakfast thing?" she muttered, biting into her toast. "I'm going to miss out on all of the good surgeries."

He smiled at her. This was the woman he'd fallen in love with. Driven, quirky, always rushed.

And though one may curse the events they've been through in their life, he considered them a blessing, because he had finally seen the other side of this woman.

And he loved her even more.

Quietly, he extended his hand out, palm down on the table, covering something, "This is for you." he smiled, removing his hand.

She looked down to find a small black velvet box. Without hesitation she opened it and found a beautiful three-stone diamond in the box.

He pulled it from the box, and slid it on her finger without saying a word, quietly awaiting for her to elicit a response.

She looked at the ring, and looked to him, and gave him that cocky half-smile that she always gave him when she was pleasantly surprised, "It's about damn time."

_**Cause I'm bound by love**_

_**And I'm thinking of what could be.**_

_**Where there's a will, there's a way,**_

_**so will you come out and play, with me,**_

_**with me.**_


End file.
